The Life of Public Safety Communications Signals: A Comparative Security
An analysis of security vulnerabilities in P25, TETRA, and TETRAPOL systems and suggested countermeasures.
Public safety agencies and critical infrastructure operators depend on trunked land-mobile radio (LMR) systems based on P25, TETRA, and TETRAPOL. These systems aim to protect both the content and existence of communications. However, LMR standards reveal a significant gap between the confidentiality of content and communication. This study explores the depth and impact of adversarial inference from exposed signaling. It demonstrates how a passive software-defined radio (SDR) observer can infer sensitive operational details, undermining LMR standards' identity obfuscation.